U.S. Coal Company Alpha Natural Resources Files For Bankruptcy

The battered U.S. coal industry suffered another big setback on Monday as its second-biggest company filed for bankruptcy court protection.

Based in Bristol, Va.,
Alpha Natural Resources once had a high-flying stock, but with coal prices tumbling it was overwhelmed by big debts it had accumulated to finance the purchase of coal mining assets.

The company filed for Chapter 11 in bankruptcy court in Richmond, Va., with assets of $10.1 billion and liabilities of $7.1 billion. Alpha Natural Resources has 8,000 employees and is a big employer in areas like southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Wyoming.

Photographer: Jon C. Hancock/Bloomberg

Founded in 2002 by Mike Quillen and private equity firm First Reserve, Alpha Natural Resources grew quickly by making big and debt-fueled deals like buying Foundation Coal for $2 billion in 2009 and Massey Energy for $7 billion in 2011.

“American coal producers have encountered a variety of macroeconomic headwinds and regulatory obstacles that collectively have distressed most of the domestic coal industry,” the company said in a court filing on Monday, adding that it had lost $875 million in 2014.

Alpha Natural Resources said it was partly a victim of the U.S. shale revolution, which has seen U.S. energy producers flood the market with cheap gas using new technologies and drilling techniques, like hydraulic fracturing. Alpha Natural Resources also pointed to slow economic growth in the U.S. and China. Alpha Natural Resources has idled or closed more than 80 mines since July 2011, fired 6,500 workers, and cut capital expenditures by 55% to $225 million in 2015, but those measures were not enough to avert a bankruptcy filing.

Still, Alpha Natural Resources thinks if it can shed some $3 billion in debt there could still be a future for itself and the U.S. coal industry. It is Alpha Natural Resources’ belief that Chapter 11 “will enable them to continue to restructure their operations and debt structure while riding out the storm that has beset the coal industry,” Philip Cavatoni, chief financial and strategy officer at Alpha Natural Resources, said in a bankruptcy filing on Monday. With “an appropriately de-leveraged balance sheet and a focused business plan, their valuable core operations will position them to participate—profitably—in the coal and broader energy industry going forward, providing thousands of jobs for their employees and necessary natural resources to their customers.”

I am a senior editor at Forbes who likes digging into Wall Street, hedge funds and private equity firms, looking for both the good and the bad. I also focus on the intersection of business and the law.